A Cross-Cultural Study of Apology Speech Act in Persian and Russian

Given the pragmatic similarities and differences among languages and by considering the importance of speech act strategies in cross-cultural communication, the purpose of this study was to investigate apology strategies used by Persian and Russian speakers. To this end, sixty native speakers of Persian and sixty native speakers of Russian were randomly selected. These 120 participants were all educated and were of the two genders. Their age also ranged from 20 to 60. The data were then collected through a Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) adapted from Nureddeen (2008). To analyze the collected data, Blum Kulka and Oleshtain’s (1984) framework was utilized. The findings revealed that there was not any significant difference between the two languages with regard to the apology strategies. It was also found that the Russian participants made use of the “expectation”, “concern for the bearer” and “offer of repair” strategies more, while the Persian speakers made more use of “promise of forbearance” and “illocutionary force indicating device (IFID).” Thus, it can be concluded that the two languages of Persian and Russian share approximately the same set of apology strategies. This study has both theoretical and pedagogical implications for linguists, language teachers, syllabus designers, and materials developers.